The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark [Paperback]

Stephen C. Carlson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2005

Secret Mark first became known to modern scholarship in 1958 when a newly hired assistant professor at Columbia University in New York by the name of Morton Smith visited the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem and photographed its fragments. Secret Mark was announced on the heels of many spectacular discoveries of ancient manuscripts in the Near East, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi gnostic corpus in the late 1940s, and promised to be just as revolutionary. Secret Mark presents what appears to be a valuable, albeit fragmentary, witness to early Christian traditions, traditions that might shed light on Jesus's most intimate behavior. In this book, Stephen C. Carlson uses state of the art science to demonstrate that Secret Mark was an elaborate hoax created by Morton Smith. Carlson's discussion places Smith s trick alongside many other hoaxes before probing the reasons why so many scholars have been taken in by it.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Secret Mark" is the name given to a portion of a document allegedly uncovered in 1958 on a trip to the monastery of Mar Saba, located near Jerusalem. Purportedly written by Clement of Alexandria to someone called Theodore in the late second or early third century, the document was discovered by Morton Smith, at the time assistant professor of history at Columbia University. Secret Mark caused a stir in the academic community, as it alludes to a homosexual relationship between Jesus and Mark, and casts doubt on the authenticity of portions of the canonized gospel of Mark. Carlson is interested, not just in the authenticity of Secret Mark, but in the issue of historical hoaxes in general. His task is made difficult in that the Mar Saba documents are no longer available for inspection, so he depends on the photographs supplied by Smith. Carlson concludes that Secret Mark is indeed a hoax, and contains clear signs of a 20th-century provenance. Moreover, he points directly at Smith as the perpetrator of the fraud. Utilizing sound historical and linguistic methods, Carlson presents a convincing case for Smith's authorship of Secret Mark. While readers unfamiliar with the critical apparatus scholars use to evaluate ancient texts will find the book challenging, Carlson's presentation of the evidence strongly supports his views. (Nov.)
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Review

Stephen Carlson's expose of the supposed letter of Clement of Alexandria and its reference to a lost "Secret" version of Mark's Gospel is a scholarly bombshell. Built on pains-taking research, without any shrillness in tone, Carlson's argument is clear and compelling. Scholars in the field of Christian Origins will have to reckon with it, and many will have to re-think some important matters about the Gospels and the historical Jesus. A wider public will find this a fascinating detective story. Far from being some lost version of the story of Jesus, Secret Mark is uncovered as a great practical joke--one that keeps Morton Smith laughing from his grave. --Larry W. Hurtado, Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology, School of Divinity, New College, University of Edinburgh

Combining the sharp eye of a master sleuth and the erudition of an academic, Stephen Carlson tells the story of an extraordinary literary hoax, detailing with forensic skill how Morton Smith succeeded in fooling many Biblical scholars into believing that he had discovered a hitherto unknown fragment of a sensational early Christian Gospel. The Gospel Hoax uncovers the clues and unmasks the perpetrator of a remarkable feat of deception. Fascinating, compelling and utterly convincing. --Mark Goodacre, Associate Professor of New Testament, Department of Religion, Duke University

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Product Details

• Paperback: 151 pages
• Publisher: Baylor University Press (November 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932792481
• ISBN-13: 978-1932792485
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,470,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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54 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Morton Smith's hilarious prank, November 24, 2005

By 

Loren Rosson III (New Hampshire, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark (Paperback)

Many scholars have long suspected that Morton Smith fabricated the letter in which Clement of Alexandria cites a homoerotic passage from a supposedly secret version of the gospel of Mark. Now, almost 50 years after Smith's "discovery" in 1958, Stephen Carlson has proven this beyond a reasonable doubt. His case against Smith is strong enough to be deemed conclusive, and can be summarized as follows.

* The author of Secret Mark must have read James Hunter's novel, The Mystery of Mar Saba, published in 1940. Philip Jenkins first made this connection in 2001, and I'm sure that if it had been made back in the 70s, a lot less people would have been duped. The novel is about a forgery at the Mar Saba library, exactly where Smith "discovered" Clement's letter. Furthermore, as Carlson notes, both Secret Mark and the novel's fictional discovery reinterpret a resurrection account from the gospels in naturalistic terms.

* The letter to Theodore sounds hyper-Clementine, as if someone went out of his way to mimic Clement (argued at length by Andrew Criddle in 1995).

* The letter conveniently goes out of its way to authenticate Secret Mark, identifying the author Clement, who in turn vouches for Secret Mark's authenticity; and his full citation of Secret Mark is unnecessary and gratuitous for the concerns he is supposedly addressing (pointed out by Robert Murgia back in 1976).

* Smith published a paper -- right before his discovery of Secret Mark -- in which he connected both Clement of Alexandria and "the mystery of the kingdom of God" (in Mk 4:11) to sexual immorality (in T. Hagigah 2:1), which, of course, is exactly what Secret Mark is all about. Amazingly, no one ever picked up on this before Carlson.

* Smith deliberately planted three confessions which reveal himself to be the author of Clement's letter:

(1) M. Madiotes -- the "bald swindler".
(2) Morton Salt -- the company which invented the kind of salt presupposed in Clement's letter.
(3) Jesus' gay affair -- with the young man later seen in Gethsemane, where Jesus was arrested, thus evoking the cultural milieu of America in the 1950s, where police were cracking down on gay men meeting in public parks and gardens.

Identifying these last signature-confessions constitutes the bulk of this book, and it's brilliant detective work on Carlson's part. When taken in conjunction with the rest of the damning evidence, forger's tremors, and convenient "coincidences", they suffocate Smith's hoax once and for all.

Carlson insists on distinguishing hoaxes from forgeries, and believes that associating Secret Mark with the latter has hindered a proper understanding of what Morton Smith was really up to. While I certainly think Secret Mark can be called a forgery, I appreciate Carlson's concern about motive. He's essentially right: Smith didn't fabricate Secret Mark to support his academic theories; he wanted to test his colleagues with an elaborate prank. Secret Mark belongs in a category of hoaxes which include the Ern Malley Poems, Alan Sokol's postmodern hoax, and the play by Sophocles really written by Dionysius the Renegade. In this sense, in terms of motive, it's quite different from forgeries like Macpherson's poetry, the Hitler Diaries, or Ireland's Shakespeare play.

I agreed with what Donald Akenson wrote in Saint Saul five years ago: it doesn't take a specialist to spot the fakery in Secret Mark. But it did take an expert like Carlson -- a legal expert, not surprisingly -- to prove it.

36 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Showing how to detect academic hoaxes by detecting one, December 17, 2005

By 

C. Price "Layman, Lawyer, Blogger" (Southern California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark (Paperback)

The Gospel Hoax is packed with analysis supporting its central conclusion - that the "discoverer" of the Secret Gospel of Mark (SGM), Morton Smith, actually forged the document as a hoax on the academic community. SGM stirred controversy because it purports to be an early, secret, version of the Gospel of Mark meant for advanced initiates that includes passages suggesting a more magic-oriented, homoerotic Jesus. Questions about its authenticity have been raised from the beginning, but could not be answered because the manuscript itself was - suspiciously to some - lost before any tests could be run. Only Smith's description and a set of photographs he took remain.

Carlson seeks to break the logjam on the question of authenticity by examining a number of aspects of SGM, Mr. Smith, and the circumstances of the discovery. In so doing, Carlson attempts to do more than simply settle the issue, he also offers guidance on how to detect other academic frauds. He is successful on both counts, though I have some reservations that I will mention below.

First, he convincingly demonstrates that the SGM manuscript (a supposed 17th century writing referring to the SGM) is a modern forgery and not an older writing recording an ancient letter. The most convincing argument raised by Carlson is the handwriting analysis, which reveals the SGM manuscript to be forged and raises further suspicions about Smith's role in the discovery. Other arguments raised by Carlson, which he takes to be hints from Smith about his role in the hoax, are interesting but apart from other evidence would not be necessarily persuasive.

Next, Carlson questions the authenticity of the supposed letter by Clement. Relying on linguistic comparisons between the letter and Clement's other writings, Carlson concludes it is too good to be true, i.e., it is too much in accord with Clement's style to be from Clement. He is openly indebted to the analysis of another and I would want to spend more time researching the issue to trust a determination about a writing being too much like an author's style to be by that author. Carlson also finds additional hints from Smith suggesting admissions of a hoax which are again intriguing, but are better evidence of the identity of the hoaxer once one is convinced of the case in chief. On firmer ground is the argument that Smith would have possessed sufficient knowledge of Clement's writings and linguistic ability to pull off the hoax himself -- which some defenders of SGM have denied.

The following chapter targets the fragments of the supposed SGM itself and concludes that they are products of the 20th century around the time of the late fifties. The focus on homoerotic portrayals, Carlson argues, would have been meaningless if written in the first or second centuries, but were particularly appropriate for the time period and circumstances in which Smith lived and worked. I did not find the 20th-century marks as "uncanny" as Carlson, but it is an interesting point. More discussion of attitudes in the first and second centuries would have helped. Additionally, I fear that such a criteria may be overly subjective and would require getting into not just the time period of the suspected hoaxer, but would require a deeper examination of that person's mind and personal circumstances than we are likely to be able to achieve in many cases.

Carlson's wrap-up is convincing in its conclusion that SGM is a modern hoax perpetrated by Morton Smith. It is also valuable in that it offers approaches and criteria for the uncovering of other academic hoaxes. Though I was not as persuaded as he as to the efficacy of some of those tools, the discussion itself is valuable and The Gospel Hoax effectively offers future debunkers much with which to work. Those are minor quibbles and go, as we lawyers sometimes say, to the weight of some of the evidence rather than its admissibility. Well-written, well-researched, and well-done.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still Not Sure, February 9, 2008

By 

Mark A. Smiddy (Benton, Kentucky United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark (Paperback)

Carlson did a bang up job on this topic and does a another superb job of expressing his opinions, still... Since I first read this book I've heard some pretty harsh comments from those who are more learned than I in this area who give Carlson's work a thumbs down, so for me the verdict is still out and I'm reading other books on the topic with differing views just to give the topic a fair shake.